Anything I speak, I know to speak a second time: My brother
is dying. My brother is dying. You are not my sister
tearing through an Italian restaurant, blistering
with what I have given her
more intimate with the fit of a Gildan
shirt versus this thing hovering some
distance over my head always threatening
grey blonde grey depending on mood
secrets held in pinprick dots
Because you are ten, pink skin streaked with freckles and sunscreen, sea salt on your lips as you run your tongue around your ice-cream, and a man with a grey wire moustache puts his hand on your leg and asks your mum when he can marry you, and the sand of his handprint sticks to your skin no matter how hard and raw you scrub it.
There was no mystery to why we learned these things. Our parents told them to make the good times a little harder, or the hard times just a little bit worse. What is security but another opportunity to be creative in our fear.
There were no innocent bystanders,
except a herd of deer, unable to perceive
the color orange. My method consisted
in having a plan, but I was letting the dirt
do my thinking—I’d had it around so
Tasmanian devils (yes they are real animals) give birth to about 40 babies at a time but they only have four teats and so what that means is that the first four babies that make it to those four teats are the only ones that survive and do you know what happens next?
Kevin hates it when you leave the peaches on the counter, plump orange skin bruising when squeezed. You stare at them when you do your morning pages at 8A.M. like the productivity videos you watch,
Tim tells me that broke up is strong language to use. I wonder how he would describe our ending. Broke up implies an entity to be broken, but we never made it that far. I still don't know what we
Previously on...
Chapter 1a: Converging
Chapter 1b: Crisis
Chapter 1c: Fighting the Fog
Chapter 2a: Two People
Chapter 2b: Divergence
I wrote this book manic, in psychosis, in withdrawal, while feeling like I was overdosing,
Our return to campus one evening to discover spray-painted in black on the university’s entrance wall, “ICI ZOO ETRANGER” (HERE IS THE FOREIGN ZOO).
“Mom, if I was born a boy,”
“Like you were supposed to be,” without a tinge of playfulness as she scanned the bar cart in the living room for her preferred drink. She resembled a mannequin and had
Conscious of your eyes on me, but unwilling to let you derail my mission, I whispered to myself, “You’ve ungently, Brutus…”
We go from ecstatic to great to good to therapy. I go to bed numb and wake up furious. I leave you for the couch every night. Is year seven always like this? When Marilyn Monroe makes a movie about
I was too shocked to scream
at the roosters to stop crowing, their throats
robust and practiced in a language I find myself
disarming at all costs. In my first few years
of
I was with a Serbian who said, “Tonight is about your pleasure,” so I was doing great.
Previously on...
Chapter 1a: Converging
Chapter 1b: Crisis
Chapter 1c: Fighting the Fog
Chapter 2a: Two People
my family and I moved
from Japan to America
and found solace
in hunting mushrooms
the kind we sought
are called matsu-take,
the highest grade
selling for a grand per kilo
I do
It is December 21, 2020, the night of the Great Conjunction. For the first time since the 1600s, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest to each other they’ve ever been. NASA says you’ll be able to
Teenaged girls raised in the sixties, what harm could come from going with a sought after, popular guy?
Then a spring day burns through with such clarity Melissa asks me to help her interview dog walkers at the dog park. Not the day nurse. Not the other aid. Me—our first outing since the
Before I was me, I was somebody else, the same as we all are. A human is constantly shedding skin like a snake. It’s just a metaphor.
I learned all the tricks in middle school; I learned how to
— after Frank Ocean, “Nikes”
You would have laughed
at the sight of us: bodies twisted,
one foot in the air to show off
a new pair of Nikes; iPhones ringing
with warning about deep
To the left of the counter stands a dead rat on its hind legs, taxidermied, with one front paw extended and one middle finger raised. An insult that looks like benediction. A pair of antlers sit atop
How many white girls of twelve and thirteen became the dreamed-about woman back home when I listened to Every Little Kiss by Bruce Hornsby and the Range?
